PARTICIPANTS

Mr. McGeorge Bundy

Ambassador Alan G.
Kirk

After the usual exchange of friendly remarks, I said that we were facing
the period of spring fever, that the bellicose statements of the Gimo
and others publicly announcing this was the year and that they were
ready to go, time was ripe, now or never; and that we knew pretty well
what was going on in terms of building LCMs, training parachutists to form an airborne division,
etc.

The Embassy plus AID, MAAG and MAP, plus the service attaches, plus Taiwan Defense Command
(TDC) ought to warn us of impending
unilateral action in forces, but I said it is possible for the Chinese
to make a quick airlift employing all their available C-46s, C-47s,
etc., lifting 5 and 10 thousand men. This kind of force could take off
in the dark or early dawn. We would have considerable trouble in
detecting it and certainly in stopping it.

While the Gimo protests that he would never violate the terms of the
Mutual Defense Treaty, that he was a man of honor, that he resented the
Ambassador referring to that Treaty every time (three times) I saw him,
yet we are all uneasy. In fact, the Gimo sent a message by Admiral Felt to the effect that
President Kennedy should be
informed that the Gimo would never violate his word, etc. etc. (I was
informed of this after the event.) This poses some problems about the
propriety of military and other personalities allowing themselves to be
drawn into conversations by the Gimo on political matters. After all the
American Ambassador is the channel for such things, and military and
others should not allow themselves to be trapped in any such discussions
nor serve as a medium of transmission of messages indirectly to the
President of the United States. In fact, Mr. Bundy
and I discussed how to deal with the paper that Admiral Felt was given at the airport
in Taipei, which was the Chinese interpreters paper as to what the Gimo
had said to Admiral Felt.1 This requires some careful thought as
to exactly what should be done by [Page 343]Washington, whether to ignore it or send out word that
no such type of messages should be accepted for transmission behind the
back of the United States Ambassador. (This is a bit delicate, i.e., do
we do it through the Department of Defense or do we do it through the
Chinese Ambassador or directly to the Gimo via the Charge?)

Regarding Vice Admiral Melsons
visit on the day after my own departure (January 19),2 it seems to me this was
not wholly incorrect as after all Vice
Admiral Melson was on the Blue Lion Committee and I must
assume, as the cable shows, the meeting was an elaboration of my own
report of my talk with the Gimo on the 16th.3 The important item in this
conversation of Admiral
Melsons was point no. 6, i.e., that there would be no breach
of the Treaty if the Chinese Government decided to land two divisions on
the mainland to gain a foothold.4 The argument was
that it was a “sovereign right” on their part and not anything to do
with the United States, that the United States would not be involved. It
does, however, pose the serious question of what is to happen if those
divisions get in trouble and have to be rescued. Mr.
Bundy agreed that it poses a serious problem
and how to stop a large operation of this kind was difficult. A direct
warning not to do such a thing in advance might be ignored or might be
hard to deliver in person to the Gimo.5 On the
other hand, it would not be unreasonable to assume the Chinese
Communists [Page 344]might use air attack
either to bomb China troops coming by sea or to bomb the port of
embarkation and airfield on Taiwan. The question then arises: should the
7th Fleet come to the succor of the Chinese Nationalists or the defense
of Taiwan itself? Possibly the ChiComs would refrain from overt attack
on Taiwan, the Penghus, or the Offshore Islands in order not to embroil
the United States.

“This kind of military action is Chinas domestic affair, and is the
exercise of her sovereign right as an independent nation, and as such it
has absolutely nothing to do with any other country.”

Nevertheless, the U.S. Government must have some plan as to what is to be
done on our part in the event the Gimo exercises “sovereign rights” and
does something of this kind to our definite discomfiture.

In this connection, we then discussed the delivery of the C-123s and
mentioned the hassle on the alleged bad faith of the United States in
not making all five of them available on Taiwan now.6 My position was that the first
two should be delivered when they are completely prepared but I was
strongly against sending the other three out this spring or summer. Were
all five to be on Taiwan, it seems to me a definite risk that they would
be employed for large drops with or without our concurrence. If “large
drops” were made somewhere inland carrying between two and three hundred
Chinese troops, to seize a town or an area disaffected, and then get
into trouble, the Gimo would want to go and bail them out willy-nilly.
Here again we are in trouble. Consequently, Mr.
Bundy and I felt it would be better to give
them the two C-123s as soon as fully ready but not to send the other
three until after next fall after the summer period of tension has
passed. While we both knew that the other three 123s might be employed
for different types of operations elsewhere, my feeling was they must
stay outside the control of the Gimo, i.e., at Okinawa or possibly Clark
Field.

I explained that I was under constant pressure to agree that certain
things could be done by the Gimo with his own money from his special
preparedness tax. Some of these things did not involve the United
States. My position had been consistently that use of these sums to buy
equipment in other areas used up the resources of foreign exchange, were
definitely inflationary to the economy of the Island, and objectionable
from many points of view. Here I remarked that it should be remembered
that the Vice President, Mr. Chen Cheng, had
assured me that special preparedness tax would expire 30 June 1963, and
would not be renewed.

We talked about the success of my country team, which I explained was due
to the caliber of U.S. military or civil people in charge. They were
harmonious and outstanding, we shared our points of view, and worked
together shoulder to shoulder. All these men understand they are working
for the President of the United States and not for the President of
China.

Reference is apparently to the Chinese record
of a January 15 conversation between Admiral Felt and President Chiang, filed as an attachment to a
January 30 memorandum from Forrestal to Harriman, which states that
Bundy had given it to him on January 29
after talking to Felt.
(Ibid., Michael
Forrestal)↩

Melsons
conversation of January 19 with Chiang, with no
one else present except a Chinese interpreter, was reported in a
message that Clough sent to
Harriman on January 21
[text not declassified], filed as an
attachment to a January 21 memorandum from William E. Colby of the
Central Intelligence Agency to Forrestal. (Kennedy Library, National Security Files, Countries
Series, China) See the Supplement.↩

According to a memorandum of the conversation that Clough transmitted with a January
23 letter to Harriman,
Kirk discussed with
Chiang the work of the Joint U.S.-GRC committee to study GRC capabilities for a landing on the
mainland (Blue Lion Committee), which he and
Chiang had agreed on September 6, 1962 (see
Document 151), to establish. (Library
of Congress Manuscript Division, Harriman Papers, Kennedy-Johnson
Administrations, Subject Files, Kirk,
Alan G.)↩

Cloughs January 21 message to
Harriman, cited in footnote 2 above, reported that
Chiang had given Melson an unsigned paper entitled
“Important Principles Guiding the Landing of Chinese Government
Forces on the Mainland” with six points. The first four points
concerned the size of forces to be landed and the area where
landings might be made. Point 5 stated that the United States should
not be involved. Point 6 reads as follows:↩

Cloughs January 21
message to Harriman, cited in
footnote 2 above, stated that he
was to meet with Shen the next
day and intended to state that “any action of the character
contemplated in Chiangs paper must be a matter
of joint agreement as provided by treaty.” Harriman replied in a January 21
message, filed with Cloughs,
concurring in Cloughs
proposed statement, authorizing him to state that he was acting
under instructions, and adding that he should make it clear that the
United States would not agree to a modification of the Treaty and
exchange of notes. See the Supplement. No record has been found of
Cloughs January 22
meeting with Shen, but he
evidently discussed Point 6 with him. A February 15 letter from
Clough to Kirk states that he had heard
nothing further from Shen
about Point 6. (Department of State, FE/EA Files: Lot 66 D 224, R.C., ORG 1)↩

Kirk
discussed the C-123s with Shen on January 10 in the conversation partially
reported in Document 161. That portion of
the discussion is recorded in a memorandum of conversation dated
January 31 and transmitted in a letter of that date from Clough to Harriman. (Department of State,
Central Files, 611.93/1-3163)↩